The Oakland plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
4.55 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 2.67 inches, fell in 1987.
Oakland’s center stands about 360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 260 ft to 430 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Zilpha formation and Winona formation (clay, sand), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 57×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, sand. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Claystone, clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Oakland reaches the Gulf of America by way of Kuykendall Creek, North Fork Tillatoba Creek, Tillatoba Creek, the Tallahatchie, the Yazoo and the Mississippi: about 720 river miles.
450 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Oakland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oakland has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in August; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 59 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Oakland normally reaches 65° and falls to 38°. The record high is 86°, in 1955; the record low 20°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 4.30 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Water Valley, 18 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.